Page "Nuri as-Said" Paragraph 4

Nuri headed the Arab troops who took Damascus for Faisal in the wake of the retreating Turkish forces in 1918.

When Faisal was deposed by the French in 1920, Nuri followed the exiled monarch to Iraq, and in 1922 became first director general of the Iraqi police force.

He used this position to fill the force with his placemen, a tactic he would repeat in subsequent positions and which was a basis of his considerable political clout in later years.